A final CPAC thought
One last post, and I’m done with CPAC posting. Thanks much to Heather and Stacey at DCI Group for the invitation to be on bloggers’ row, and thanks also to all of the other bloggers with whom I spent my week. On the first day, when candidate after candidate came by the tables to talk with the bloggers, I tried to pump many of them for thoughts on DC issues, and I really couldn’t get any headway with anyone at all. No one cared, even though Congress is minded by these men and women who find themselves sent to Washington.
When it came to DC Voting Rights, though, I did get one candidate’s staff to give me an answer that I found interesting. It didn’t come until right until I was packing up today, but it certainly explains why more people aren’t interested in DC becoming it’s own state. He walked up in his perfect suit and very Washington hairdo and he said…
Senator Marion Barry.
I was floored, I didn’t think anything could make me think twice about statehood for DC. That sure did.
Superficially, that’s a great answer – and anyone who has lived in D.C., as I have, recognizes how that resonates with conservative residents of the DC Metro area. The problem, of course, is that it is, at its root, the worst answer. It says that DC can’t vote for its representatives because we don’t agree with the choices they might make. In effect, it says that DC can’t be trusted with the vote because they’re too stupid not to vote for an imbecile.
Guess what? That same rationale could be used to deprive *any* population from the vote, depending on who has the power to grant it.
There are plenty of good arguments for opposing D.C. statehood – substantive polciy arguments that focus on D.C.’s role as our capital federal district. Unfortunately, those nuanced policy arguments don’t sway the masses like the three words “Senator Marion Barry” do. And unfortunately, that just goes to show the speaker’s point.
I can absolutely agree that the outcome of the election not being well liked is no reason not to have, it’s just reason why more people can’t get all the way behind a DC Statehood movement. The visceral reaction to Senator Marion Barry is enough to say, “Well, I’ll let someone else push for this one.”